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Dietary Fish Oil Impairs Primary Host Resistance Against Listeria monocytogenes More than the Immunological Memory Response

Nutritional Sciences Graduate Program and ^* Departments of Animal Sciences, Nutritional Sciences and Microbiology and Molecular Immunology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211

³To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: FritscheK{at}missouri.edu.

The primary objective of this study was to determine whether dietary (n-3) polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) impair the ability of mice to generate an immunological memory response against the bacterial pathogen, Listeria monocytogenes. Weanling BALB/c female mice were fed for 28 d one of two semipurified high fat diets containing either lard or refined menhaden fish oil, rich in long-chain (n-3) PUFA. Mice were immunized with 10⁴ or 10³ colony forming units (cfu) bacteria. Thirty-five days later, these immune mice and age-matched naïve (i.e., unimmunized) mice were challenged with 10⁵ cfu bacteria. Three days postchallenge, bacterial clearance was determined. Compared with lard-fed mice, naïve mice in the fish oil treatment group had higher bacterial loads in their liver and spleen (P < 0.001). When mice were immunized with 10⁴ cfu bacteria before rechallenge with 10-fold more bacteria, both lard- and fish oil–fed mice had significantly lower bacterial loads in their liver and spleen (e.g., 2 log₁₀; P < 0.001) compared with their naïve counterparts. However, when the immunization dose was reduced to 10³ bacteria, a modest diet treatment effect was observed, such that compared with immune lard-fed mice, immune fish oil–fed mice had significantly greater bacterial loads in their liver and spleen (i.e., 0.5 log₁₀; P < 0.01). These data demonstrate for the first time that although dietary (n-3) PUFA can significantly impair host resistance to a primary as well as a secondary L. monocytogenes infection, the impairment of the immunological memory response is much less severe.

KEY WORDS: • (n-3) polyunsaturated fatty acids • fish oil • immunological memory • bacterial infection • mice

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